1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information recording apparatus. More specifically, the present invention relates to an information recording apparatus for dubbing digital picture and audio information recorded on a magnetic tape onto a recording medium.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, there is widely available a digital information reproducing apparatus that reproduces digital information generated by a digital video camera or the like, which is capable of taking pictures of objects and portraits, recording the taken picture information and audio information obtained with a microphone on magnetic tape, and reproducing the picture information and the audio information recorded on the magnetic tape so that the picture can be reproduced on a display device of a TV set or the like and the sounds can be reproduced from a speaker or the like.
There is a case where the picture and audio information recorded on the magnetic tape set in the digital information reproducing apparatus is required to be dubbed onto a recording medium such as a hard disk or an optical disc by using the information recording apparatus. In this case, a digital input and output terminal of the digital information reproducing apparatus is connected to a digital input and output terminal of the information recording apparatus via an IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 1394 cable or the like. The digital information reproducing apparatus is set to work in a reproducing mode while the information recording apparatus is set to work in a recording mode, to that the picture and audio information recorded the magnetic tape is reproduced and is sent to the information recording apparatus. Thus, the picture and audio information recorded on the magnetic tape can be recorded on the recording medium.
In this way, a dubbing process is performed for recording picture and audio information, which is recorded on the magnetic tape in the digital information reproducing apparatus, onto the recording medium in the information recording apparatus. During this dubbing process, if the cable is disconnected from the digital input and output terminal of the digital information reproducing apparatus and/or the digital input and output terminal of the information recording apparatus for any reason, the dubbing process is interrupted. If the dubbing process is interrupted in this way, the information recording apparatus may detect the disconnection of the cable, so that a recording operation is stopped or halted temporarily in an automatic manner. At this point, although there are some information recording apparatuses that continue their recording operation even if their cables are disconnected, the continuation of the recording operation is not good because it will use a recording area of the recording medium wastefully.
However, although the above-mentioned information recording apparatus stops or halts temporarily the recording operation automatically when disconnection of the cable is detected, the digital information reproducing apparatus will continues its reproducing operation even if the cable is disconnected. Therefore, when the cable is reconnected and the dubbing process is restarted, it is necessary to find a reproduction position on the magnetic tape when the dubbing became disable due to the disconnection of the cable (a reproduction position on the magnetic tape when the cable was disconnected). In this case, a user has to repeats additional reproduction operations, fast rewind operations and fast forward operations many times with the information recording apparatus for checking until which position the contents have already been dubbed onto the recording medium. These operations may be tiresome for the user. In addition, if the user feels that the operations for checking until which position the contents have already been dubbed onto the recording medium are tiresome, the user may perform the dubbing process again from the beginning. In this case, however, a recording area of the recording medium in the information recording apparatus may be used wastefully.
At this point, conventional techniques of restarting a dubbing process after stopping the same are disclosed in JP-A-2001-167516 and JP-A-2001-76424, for example. The conventional technique described in JP-A-2001-167516 is a technique of performing the dubbing process between information processing apparatuses (i.e., information recording apparatuses) such as a plurality of video cassette recorders (VCRs) that are connected to a network, and it is not the technique about a process for dubbing the picture and audio information in the digital information reproducing apparatus to the information recording apparatus such as a hard disk recorder or a DVD recorder. In this conventional technique, if the information processing apparatus is reconnected after disconnected from the network during the dubbing process, it restarts the dubbing process after rewinding the tape based on a dubbing timer value that is stored in a flash ROM. However, it is not always true that a stop position after rewinding the tape is a restart position of the dubbing process. The reason is as follows. Although the restart position of the dubbing process is determined based on the dubbing timer value stored in the flash ROM, there may be a case where the stop position after rewinding the tape does not match the position from which the dubbing process should be restarted when an inertia force due to rotation of the tape is added. Therefore, there will be a problem that it is difficult to restart the dubbing process of information in a correctly continuous manner from the information dubbed last time if the stop position after rewinding the tape does not match the restart position of the dubbing process.
The conventional technique described in JP-A-2001-76424 is a technique concerning a data recording apparatus that makes a duplicates of recording media between mini discs (MDs), and it is not the technique for dubbing the picture and audio information recorded on the magnetic tape set in the digital information reproducing apparatus onto a recording medium in the information recording apparatus such as a hard disk recorder or a DVD recorder. In this conventional technique, cluster addresses of a master disc and a target disc are recorded and kept in a nonvolatile flash memory every time when dubbing of one cluster is finished during the dubbing process of a data that is recorded by the cluster. If the dubbing process is interrupted, restart of the dubbing process is performed by reading a data to be recorded in the interrupted cluster from the master MD based on the cluster address read out from the flash memory and by recording the data on the target MD in the address next to the cluster address read out from the flash memory.